My Chemical Romance swung for the fences with their third album and first after a platinum breakthrough. The Black Parade is maybe the artistic pinnacle of 2000s emo, a Queen-inspired rock opera about death that is awkward, charming, ambitious and moving. The title track is a definitive song of the decade, full of drama and hooks. “Teenagers” uses a bar rock parody riff to anchor a surprisingly incisive lyric about the American epidemic of school shootings and the culture of violence that birthed it. If it sounds a little pretentious, well, My Chemical Romance had no other reason to exist. And The Black Parade became the most successful example of an emo band trying to move forward creatively without alienating their audience.